


I Would Have Died A King

by daphnerunning



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Cousin Incest, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 13:22:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnerunning/pseuds/daphnerunning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Fingon's daring rescue, Maedhros has some decisions to make. Chief among them should be the matter of Kingship, but Fingon has a way of making himself a priority.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Would Have Died A King

Findekáno wants something from him.

 

Maedhros can see it in his eyes, in the soft tread of his feet, in the way he pauses before entering the room. “You don’t need to do that,” Maedhros says quietly, though his cousin has made no sound. “Hide your sound and lurk in the corridors; you would sleep by my sickbed but hide when I awaken?”

 

The elf who enters is a tall one (though not near so tall as Maedhros), strong and broad for one of his kind, with golden thread braided into the dark fall of his hair. In Maedhros’s eyes, Findekáno is still the eager, urgent young cousin who had laughed with him in Tirion, who had been so eager to show off his skill with a bow as the lights of the Trees mingled. 

 

There’s been little laughter between them for many years.

 

Maedhros expects judgment, expects blame, but the elf’s voice is gentle when he says, “The Healer said you might have trouble adjusting when you awakened to find your hand missing.”

 

Maedhros looks down at the stump. “She’s a poor excuse for a healer, if she thought I hadn’t noticed before now. Come, don’t shrink from me, I’m still….”

 

He isn’t, though.

 

More than any of the rest of his brothers, he’d known what he was swearing. The Everlasting Dark cannot be invoked, he’d known even then, and banished again. It has been his constant companion for centuries, not a poison as his brothers have often exclaimed, but a slow, cold hardening of the soul. In times that he’s had no companions but the gore-crows and the taunts of Morgoth, rotting in a dungeon and chained to a rock, it’s been his only comrade. 

 

He knows the Dark well, and it knows him.

 

“Still the elf I used to know?”

 

Findekáno sits on the edge of his bed, gold-laced braids falling down around his shoulder as he reaches out, tracing a finger over the shell of his ear, an oddly comforting, familiar gesture from one who’d done the same so long ago it feels like another lifetime. “You are to me, Maitimo.”

 

The word burns through his mind, hotter than the pain in his wrist, in the hand that he’d last seen wilting slowly inside its fell manacle, and his words are slow to come to his tongue. “Call me as the others do.”

 

“Maedhros?” Findekáno raises an eyebrow. “Should I not call you King, and you call me Fingon?”

 

“That depends,” Maedhros says slowly, “on why I heard your song in the long darkness.”

 

Findekáno settles himself, and Maedhros watches his eyes go to the bandaged stump, as the eyes of all will from now on, he supposes. “I told my kin that I was setting out to mend the rift in the Noldor. I wanted to repair the sundering of my father from yours, and make them as brothers again even after Fëanor’s death.”

 

Maedhros turns, left hand rising to grasp Findekáno’s shoulder. “Noble words. Admirable, and understandable.” Even his left hand is strong, and holds Findekáno fast as he tries to move. “But not the truth.”

 

“Your eyes burn,” Findekáno complains, in that moment sounding more like the child Maedhros had known, and less like the foreign shining warrior who’d rescued him on eagle’s wings. “It doesn’t become you to be as dense as one of the Naugrim.”

 

“Meaning?” 

 

“ _Meaning_  that you were held captive by the enemy, and no one was seeking you!” Findekáno shrugs off his hand at last, standing to pace over to one of the high-vaulted windows. “Your valiant brothers had given you up for dead, or turned. Father wouldn’t send anyone.”

 

“He let you go.”

 

“I didn’t ask  _permission_.”

 

Maedhros watches him, silent, remembering other days of waking and finding Findekáno staring out his window in Tirion. There had been no armor on their shoulders then, no weapons belted about their waists, and he’d worn his own hair unbraided down his back, never fearing it would be caught by an enemy, for who would dare challenge the proud house of Finwë?

 

He watches silently for a long time, watches the light change on Findekáno’s face as the sun sets, watches the gold blaze in his hair, and says, “No.”

 

Findekáno turns as if he hadn’t noticed the pause in their conversation, looking at him expectantly. “No?”

 

“No, you shouldn’t call me King.” He looks down at the stump of his hand, and says softly, “And perhaps no one should ever call me Maitimo again, either.”

 

“Always so serious.” Findekáno sits on his bedside again, against him this time as if nothing had ever happened, and Melkor still lay in chains in the halls of Mandos. “Have I not repaired the strife between our houses?”

 

Maedhros looks up, startled. “You repair? You showed mercy when none was due, and courage when you needed it not.”

 

“But Losgar—“

 

“Better that it had never happened. A thousand times better that you and yours weren’t there.” He will probably see the ships burning until his last days. Even now, it feels as if he’s consumed by flame, and maybe always will be. He looks up, feeling his mouth twist into a rictus of a smile. “Bad enough that I carry it with me still.”

 

Findekáno sees something in his eyes, and reaches for him, in a way that Maedhros had thought no one would ever reach for him again, cupping his face in two strong, whole ones. “You repent of it?”

 

“I regret it.” Useless, at this point. He shakes his head. “To wish that it had been otherwise would be to wish I were born the son of another, and I’ll not utter such disrespect.”

 

“So you’ll be king.”

 

Maedhros opens his mouth, then closes it again, laying his cheek against Findekáno’s palm. “Do you remember a time before succession?” he asks softly, and Findekáno stretches out., laying his head on Maedhros’s shoulder, the warmth and ease of him some comfort. “When we thought Grandfather would rule forever?”

 

“I was young.”

 

“So was I.”

 

“You look older now. Older than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

 

Maedhros’s eyes cloud over for a moment, hearing not Findekáno’s teasing voice, but the harsh laugh of Melkor’s minions. “I have seen,” he says simply.

 

“You’re just not looking at me enough.”

 

“Brat. You think well of yourself.”

 

“You should be throwing yourself at my feet to thank me,” Findekáno says, eyes bright as he shifts, laying on top of Maedhros instead of by his side. “Promise me all favors, sing to me of your gratitude?”

 

“Findekáno—“

 

“I remember the time before the Trees died too,” Findekáno breathes, letting his legs shift apart, straddling Maedhros’s hips as he leans down to say against his ear, “You were as bright flame to me, shining brighter than either of them.”

 

“Fin—“

 

“And I knew then that I could never have a wife, nor a child.” Findekáno leans up on his arms, eyes dark as he meets Maedhros’s. “They say that to have a child is to find a woman to pluck out the fire of your heart, and put it in her belly.” His long fingers are back, stroking cool down Maedhros’s cheek. “But mine only burns for you.”

 

Maedhros reaches his left hand over, closing it over Findekáno’s. “Stop,” he says, voice a harsh whisper.

 

“I’m sorry.” Findekáno’s face is suddenly nervous, a look that doesn’t suit his new adulthood. “I know, we were young, you probably—“

 

Maedhros squeezes his hand to silence him. “Be patient. I’ve looked into nothing but the void for decades. This is…” He trails off, because he doesn’t know the word he wants. “What’s that thing in the sky, the golden flame that puts me in mind of Laurenlin of old?”

 

“The sun?”

 

“Aye, that. Your words….even seeing your face after so long in his clutches…it reminds me of the first time I saw it.” He closes his eyes, remembering the stunned disorientation. “They all screamed, all his creatures, even in the depths of his fortresses. They left me alone—I thought at first I could escape, but it was just as much a shock to me. That’s when he chained me to the rock.”

 

“Maitimo, that was five years ago.”

 

Maedhros’s mouth twists again. “Felt like longer. I counted about two thousand of those. Is that how we’re counting time, now?”

 

“It is. I’m…I heard about your father.”

 

“He chose it.” Maedhros speaks quietly, but his voice is firm nonetheless. _As we all chose our doom._ He doesn’t say that, any more than he says how it felt to watch his father’s body crumble to ash in his hands, with his brothers on that lonely hilltop.

 

He’s had plenty of time to think about it, after all.

 

“Maedhros.” The word sounds odd on Findekáno’s tongue, as if he’s rolling it around, not quite sure he likes the feel of it in his mouth. “Hmm. Maedhros. That’s what you want me to use now?”

 

 _I take it back_ , Maedhros wants to say. _Let someone, let you of all people remember me as I was._ “That is what they call me now.”

 

“And shall I obey your orders as in all things?” Findekáno startles him, always does, and now strips off his blanket to climb atop him again, pressing a slow kiss to his lips. “As I ever have?”

 

“Ever? You’ve never obeyed an order from me in your life. I remember a few I’ve tried to give.”

 

“Mmm, so do I. Some of my favorites. ‘Don’t climb up the wall to my window at night, Findekáno.’ ‘Don’t touch me there, Findekáno.’”

 

“ ‘Listen to your father when he says the sons of Fëanor are dangerous, Findekáno.’ “ Maedhros looks up, and returns the next kiss, all the fingers he has left trembling at the way heat surges through him again, when he’d thought he’d never feel anything but cold. “ ‘Kill me, Findekáno.’ “

 

“I’m especially glad I didn’t listen to that one,” his troublesome cousin says, and there’s a too-serious relief in his smile. “If I’d listened, we wouldn’t be here.” He dips his head down, and Maedhros feels more of himself come alive, phantom pain sparking in the hand still owned by Morgoth. That isn’t the only part of his body that rouses to Findekáno’s touch, and no matter how accursed he is, body and soul still respond as if he’s barely into his majority again.

 

“Some might—think it better,” he says, but it’s hard to remember the gloom of Angband when Findekáno’s lips are on his, the lean lithe strength of his body pressing down, the heady taste of his lips, and every hard flat plane of them arching slowly against each other.

 

“Too serious,” is Findekáno’s only response, and he doesn’t let Maedhros speak again for a long time.

 

He thinks, at first, that Findekáno wants him to feel better. It’s pity, more than anything, for his maimed body, for his years of torture, for his gloomy and bitter past, that drives his cousin to touch him like this, surely.

 

But when their clothing is on the floor, when he accepts that pity and grabs at it anyway just to _feel_ something, when Findekáno moves inside him and Maedhros’s breath comes out in a tight, needing hiss, he looks up, and the only thing in Findekáno’s gaze is _want_.

 

The surge of pride, that he can still be something Findekáno wants, even like this—that he can still clutch at gold-braided hair and wrap his legs around his lover and hear that broken, hungry sound come from his lips—that Findekáno doesn’t _hate_ him, still finds pleasure in his body, his spirit—that Morgoth hadn’t sucked all the life out of him after all—that surge of pride makes him giddy enough that all he feels, for the first time in long decades, is _good_.

 

He surges up, claiming Findekáno’s mouth in a hungry kiss, hearing a startled exclamation against his lips when he bears down, using his weight to push the other elf onto his back, straddling his hips as he sinks slowly down, eyes lidding at the stretch of Findekáno inside him, at every inch of it filling him, hard and aching and so hot it burns away the last of the cold, sending ripples of heat through his body instead.

 

He hears Findekáno groan a forbidden name when he spills, but the heat inside him and his own ragged gasps of completion are enough to make him forgive the indiscretion.

 

Maedhros comes back to himself a long time later, when the sweat has cooled on his back, and his thighs have stopped trembling, and Findekáno is curled up against his chest. Only then does he see the worry in his cousin’s eyes. “What?” he asks, a little self-conscious for the first time in a century. “Was that not…” Then, he understands. “You were afraid I’d leave. For the peaceful shores?”

 

“Others who have suffered—“

 

“Would be welcome there,” Maedhros says, but his voice, for once, isn’t bitter. “If you’ll worry about something, worry about whether there will be any orcs left for you to kill once I learn to use my left hand.”

 

Instead of laughing, Findekáno lifts a hand to stroke the side of his face. “That’s more like you. Will you stay here with me, just until you recover?”

 

“I…” Maedhros sighs, nuzzling into the touch. “My brothers will need to know where I am.”

 

“Father sent messengers. Maglor, I think, is on his way.”

 

Maedhros doubts strongly if Fingolfin had in fact sent messages to _all_ his brothers, or Celegorm at least would be here trying to burn the place down, like as not convinced that he’d turned. “Then we’d best do the ceremony soon. Tell your father.”

 

“Ceremony?”

 

Maedhros relaxes onto the bed, left hand curling up to thread through Findekáno’s hair. “If I had died under your arrow, I’d have died a king,” he says softly. “Living….I don’t want it.”

 

“You were raised for it.”

 

“No, I was raised believing Grandfather would live forever.” Maedhros’s eyes fill with death, and the Eternal Dark seems that much closer until he buries his head in Findekáno’s hair. Lemongrass, gold, and something else that smells more of Tirion than Middle-Earth meld together, soothing and exciting at once. “Or Father, after him, and he should never have been king. Not after the Oath.”

 

“Why?”

 

“A king should serve only his people. First, last, always. My father, my brothers, and I…there’s no room for us to serve another master, not fully, not when the Oath holds us. Besides, your father will be a good king.”

 

Findekáno tugs a lock of his hair, winding russet strands around his fingers. “You speak so fey, stop it. You’re not chained to anything, anymore. You’d be a good king, better than your father.”

 

“Are you sure you aren’t just suddenly frightened of the responsibility?” It’s the closest thing he’s come to teasing Findekáno in an age, but the startled mirth on the younger elf’s face is worth it.

 

“Frightened? Give it to me now, I’ll show you how _frightened_ I am.”

 

Maedhros laughs, It sounds strange, feels strange, but Findekáno laughs with him, and it seems less awkward than before.

 

Maybe if he has someone to laugh with him for the rest of days, they won’t seem so long.


End file.
